


The Lilac Grove

by fairxv



Category: Death Parade (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Arbiters, Character Death, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Judgment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13253319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairxv/pseuds/fairxv
Summary: A peculiar girl leaves Ginti rethinking everything he once thought about judgment and humanity.





	The Lilac Grove

The white petals scatter across the false setting – Ginti’s nose starts to hurt with each inhale. A whirlwind of emotions has consumed him, leading a strange hollowness to surface in his chest at the mention of leaving her. She stands in front of him, staring out at the grove. He’s not sure it even counts as a grove, thousands of lilacs going on for what feels like miles, though he knows there’s an end.

“Remind you of something?” He asks coldly, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

Her arrival has destroyed him, Ginti blames her for his inability to judge properly. She’s got him thinking more than he wants to, understanding death and sympathizing more than he’s comfortable with.

She looks at him over her shoulder, hair floating in the wind like a scene from a movie from the human world. His face falls, but a strike of sorrow seems to echo through him. Ginti clutches the edges of his vest, hoping she can’t see how his fingers dig into his sides. He’s never had to go through such extreme measures before, and still, he’s tricking her.

He’s been tricking her this entire time, just as Decim did all those years ago to the woman whose name Ginti couldn’t remember. He wonders if she’s caught on.

“I’ve been here before,” She says finally, “it’s where it happened.”

Her eyes go sullen as she walks through the endless row of Lilacs. Ginti walks behind her silently, dropping his arms. The atmosphere is tense, and all he’s waiting on is her come apart. The moment she breaks, he can go in and truly pass accurate judgment.

“You can change it all, go back to that moment,” Ginti says, “on one condition.”

The girl looks at him again, dress fluttering against the bare skin of skin. She was pretty for a human, Ginti thinks. Soft features that project innocence, if not for her memories, he’d be inclined to believe in such innocence. But she’s done something that marks her for the void, but as simple as her judgment once appeared, Ginti’s not so sure anymore.

“You can come back to the world of the living, but someone has to die in your place. Someone you don’t know, a total stranger.”

His impatience is present in his voice, but Ginti’s not sure that’s what it really is. He’s not feeling impatient, he’s feeling something else entirely. Something he’s not felt before – something that scares him deeply. Panic seems to flow through him like a surge as she ponders his suggestion.

But to his surprise, she smiles at him, shaking her head.

“It’s not fair,” She says, “no one pays for my mistakes but me.”

When he began making judgments, Nona had given him that tiny instrument, and he’d never hesitated to use it before, but now the thought makes him feel sick to his stomach. She deserves fair judgment, what fairness was there in forcing her to turn into something she wasn’t?

“Once you say no, you can never go back. You say goodbye to the human world, to the people you know, to the life you had before. You can’t sit there and act innocent! Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it!”

His anger is apparent, his hands reach out as his mind temporarily leaves him. Ginti’s hands press to her shoulders, gripping tightly as he stares into her eyes. Remorseful terror is all he sees.

“Of course, I thought about it!”

Her outburst takes him by surprise, but Ginti remains standing, his heart, his non-existent heart, is breaking somewhere within him.

“It’ll be the last time you and I ever see each other. After today, we’ll never see each other again. If we do, we won’t remember it. I’ll forget everything about you in a couple of days, you know that right?”

It’s a statement more to himself than her, he wants her to stay. He wants her to stand beside him at the bar, he wants to go back in time and appreciate her, he wants to tell her how much she’s changed him, how much she means to him. Ginti never thought it would happen – the day in which he went hand in hand with a human, the day he himself became obsessed with a human girl as Decim had done.

He’d thought it was so stupid, impossible even.

“I have a lot of regrets, and a lot of things I wish I would have done better,” She says, “but I wish… I wish I could have spent more time with you.”

The lilacs move faster in the wind, petals stripping off to reveal bare limbs before even they’re destroyed by the heavy wind. The trees disappear around them, the sunny sky breaking into a million cracks as Ginti loosens his grip on her shoulders. This, this isn’t right, Ginti feels it now.

How many judgments has he passed? How many innocent people have been sent to the void because of his inability to see and understand humanity?

The sky is falling now, around Ginti, collapsing around him in giant pieces to reveal the harsh exterior of the reality. She looks around, understanding the deception, but she doesn’t change. Her face remains soft, her eyes sullen.

She smiles.

“You had the chance to have your life back,” he says in disbelief, taking a step back, “you… you would never have known who it was!”   
“And that person probably has loved ones too,” She says, “even if I don’t know them, I’d still feel terrible about it. I know what I did was wrong, and I know that death was the punishment… I’m okay, Ginti.”

He hates the sound of his names on her lips, whispered like a sin that makes him want to scream. Why her? Is Nona playing one of her deceitful tricks on him now? If it is, he’s sure he’s failed and has no time to wonder what the punishment for his failure will be.

“You… I don’t understand,” he says.

Ginti sinks to the floor, bringing his knees up to his chest. He presses his forehead against his knees, trying to remember what it’s like to breathe. He’s too close to life, to close to what that same desperation felt like. Is that what humans felt in their final moments? They know they’re about to die, this desperation he feels, as though he’s failed to save someone…

He’s seen a range of emotions in his time as arbiter, emotions he’s not fully understood, emotions that he’s laughed at. He enjoyed watching humans panic in those final moments in the past, he created extreme conditions to watch them act like idiots, but this girl…

She crouches down in front of him, taking both of his hands.

“It’s okay,” She says, tears gathering in her eyes, “I’m ready.”

But Ginti isn’t.

“I don’t understand...”

 

The bar seems quieter now that she’s gone, even with Memine, there’s a notable loss of life. For a long while, Ginti sits on one of the bar stools, staring at the bottles of liquor. He’s done this a hundred times before, but this is different. Ginti isn’t a man to cry, but if a situation ever called for it, he figured it would be this one.

Instead, he’s too dry to cry, feeling utterly hollow and lost.

Nona steps in, giving him a once over as she slides into a seat next to his.

“Where did she go?”

Ginti looks at her from the corner of his eye, turning back down to his drink. The ice has melted, forming loose cubes that have turned the rich mahogany color into a light caramel color. How long as he been sitting?

“Reincarnation,” he replies with a hum, picking up the glass and lifting it to his lips.   
“Despite what she did?”  
“It was different,” Ginti says, “it wasn’t… it wasn’t like the others.”

There’s a single lilac flower in a vase at the end of the bar, and Nona’s eyes catch the unfamiliar pop of color. Maybe he does have a heart, after all, she thinks.

But maybe it’s just wishful thinking.


End file.
